1/27/2005

Why should the rich get tax breaks?

In this election year you heard one side blaming the other side about giving tax breaks to the rich and not caring about the middle class. Why would you give tax breaks to the rich? First the top 50 percent of wage earners are paying 96.03 percent of all taxes. The top five percent of wage earners pay 53.25 percent of all taxes. If the lower 50 percent of wage earners aren't paying taxes, how can you give them tax breaks? Maybe this was an election ploy by one side to get votes. Another reason is that the top 50 percent are your entrepreneurs and businessmen who create wealth to the economy when they get some extra cash. That is the biggest reason why we give tax breaks to the rich. The rich do something productive when extra money comes their way, they don't blow it.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/menu/top_50__of_wage_earners_pay_96_09__of_income_taxes.guest.html

2 comments:

Spencer said...

Tax breaks for the rich are a great idea. But how good are they for our economy? When we talk about giving the rich a tax break do we really understand how much money we are giving back to them. The best thing for me is that I don't make enough money nor do I plan to in the future to be taxed on exorbitant amounts of money.

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 on Scott's, Diane's, and Meg's comments for a spelling errors, and on Luise's for grammatical errors (waived)

The facts here are essentially correct.

And yes, it does seem odd for some to complain that tax cuts primarily benefit the rich - I think this plays to misinformation and ignorance of how the world works. Of course, as business majors most of you get that, but other majors would probably disagree.

Here's a provocative suggestion: what if we extended Meg's suggestion a bit, and only taxed companies that lost money? Hmmm. Think that would be good for the economy?